Northwestern University Athletics
ON THE RECORD ... with Andrew Nadhir
1/25/2010 12:00:00 AM | Wrestling
Jan. 25, 2010
Last year ended on a sour note for Andrew Nadhir, who finished just shy of earning an NCAA Tournament bid after placing sixth at the Big Ten Championships. But this year, while again wrestling at 149 pounds, he has blossomed into his team's finest performer, achieved a national ranking and taken dead aim at a prize far bigger than just a bid. Here the 'Cat junior talks about that goal, about last year's disappointment, about his ever-demanding sport and so much more with NUsports.com special correspondent Skip Myslenski. . .
ON THE RECORD
One of the things I think a lot of people underestimate with wrestling is the mental drain. You leave practice and your body's exhausted, but your mind is just as exhausted. That's the beauty of the sport too. It makes you so mentally tough, you can push through it. It makes everything else in life easy.
It's true. There's nothing harder than wrestling. It does make everything else easy. You go wrestle, you put yourself through all these things, it makes you so mentally tough that any obstacle you face, it's like, "You know what? I can beat this. I've been through way worse than this." It doesn't get any tougher than wrestling.
You can't have any outside distractions with wrestling. You can't come into practice not focused on what you're going to do and expect to get anything out of it. Then when you leave practice, you have to think about all the things that you did and how you can do them better.
All week, yeah, I'm going to class. But I'm thinking I've got to manage my weight, I've got to feel good for practice later on. So it requires tons of focus. It never takes a break.
I don't think people understand just how intense and draining and difficult every facet of the sport is. Not to rag on any other sport. But it's different going to hockey practice everyday, going to football practice everyday, going to baseball practice everyday and wrestling. They're different animals.
You go to wrestling, maybe it's only an-hour-and-a-half to two hours long. But it is the most intense hour-and-a-half or two hours ever. And you're doing all this while you're cutting weight. So while you feel at your absolute worst you have to perform at your absolute best.
It's been a struggle. I've been holding this weight for a few years now. But at the beginning of the season, about a month before our first competition, I really crack down and start eating healthy meals everyday. Then as it gets closer, I start to cut my portions.
I'm a junk food eater, so when I start eating healthy, I lose seven, eight pounds. The rest of it, well, now you start cutting the portions and working out extra. That's when your body really feels it.
I'm bad. Chips. I love chips. Ice cream. Those are my two biggest downfalls. And then candy. Sour candy.
Sometimes after a match, if we have a Saturday match, Sunday I'll take a day off from cutting weight and enjoy myself. You can't really fluctuate too much in one day. But not too often. I've got to keep my weight managed. At the end of the week when I'm a pound lighter, or that much closer to weight, it helps.
Right now, I probably start the week at 156 I'd say. Then I bring it down over the week to 149.
In the summer, I was 167.
It's been a big year. I'm finally nationally ranked.
The motivation and inspiration is just, I am competitive. I want to be the best. I'm not going to come here and wrestle and put myself through all this hard work-- if I'm going to do this, I'm going to try to be the best that I can.
I'm pretty self-motivated, but I have my parents too. They've always pushed me since I was a kid. A B's not good enough. You've got to get an A. Second's not good enough, third's not good enough. You've got to be first. They instilled hard work and good values like that.
I started my freshman year in high school because of my dad. My dad and both my uncles wrestled in high school. They were high school state champions and All-Americans.
I was actually a hockey player. I loved hockey before I wrestled. He convinced me, 'You've at least got to try it.' I said, 'OK.' I always planned on giving it a shot.
At the end of my freshman year, my coach, who was kind of a second father, he was my dad's coach and my uncle's coach, he told me, 'You need to choose between hockey and wrestling right now. You can't do both.'
After thinking about everything, it was almost predetermined I was going to stay wrestling. I realized that was my best shot to getting into a better college. I don't exactly have the frame to be a Big Ten hockey player. It was tough to let hockey go. But I was able to focus on wrestling and start to finally catch those other kids who had been wrestling since they were little kids.
I was a huge Red Wings fan. (Steve) Yzerman and (Sergei) Federov. Federov was always my favorite. I still follow hockey very closely. I've been to a Blackhawks-Red Wings game. That was awesome. I got to support the Red Wings.
I really liked wrestling in that it was just me. It's a team sport. But when you're out on the mat, it's just you and the other guy. You control everything. You don't have to worry about, like in hockey, your teammate makes a bad pass. You lose, but, oh, it's not my fault. You go out there and you wrestle, it's on you.
I like that. I like the responsibility falling on myself and not having to worry about anyone else affecting the outcome.
In hockey. . .you play a bad game and your team wins, yeah it's great to win. But, personally, I felt a burden. I needed to do better. That was not good enough. I can always be critical of myself. You're never perfect.
I love to win. I hate losing. They always say, the great ones, you've got to hate losing more than you like winning. That's true.
I had a pretty good Big Ten Tournament (last year). I was seeded sixth and I beat the third-ranked kid in the country from Ohio State. Then I lost to the number-two kid from Penn State, 2-1 (in the semifinals) . . . Then I dropped down to the consolation bracket and lost my first match. Had I won that match, I would have gone for third and fourth. Since I lost, I dropped to (wrestling for) fifth and sixth and lost that match.
Last year there were five spots (in the NCAA Tournament automatically) given to the Big Ten in my weight class and I finished sixth. That was tough, especially after getting into the semifinals.
I didn't (get an at-large bid). That was pretty devastating. I was pretty crushed. The way I looked at it was it was my fault for not performing better earlier in the year. That was the reason I wasn't selected. I had some losses I shouldn't have had. So I was motivated this year from that.
I'm going to show everybody. They didn't pick me, that's fine. I shouldn't have been in a spot to be a wild card. This year, I'm going to make my own spot (by qualifying automatically).
I think I'm the same wrestler I've been for a long time. I've just gotten better at everything I do. . .and next year I'll be even better. I still think I have a pretty good learning curve. That's one of the few benefits of starting in high school as opposed to starting as a kid. I still have a lot more to learn than other people. That's good.
Mentally, I am more prepared this year. I finally beat a top-ranked opponent last year at the Big Tens. I always believed I could do it. But seeing is believing, right? So I finally did it and now it's, "OK. I've proved myself. You can do it."
I remember after that match, I talked to my dad. He goes, "That's the last time you're ever going to upset a top-ranked guy." The first thing I thought was, "You're right, because I'm going to be that top-ranked guy. It's not going to be upsets anymore."
I've always expected to win every match. But now I believe it even more. I go out there like, "I'm the guy. This guy's afraid of me. I'm not the underdog. He's the underdog." Whether he's ranked higher, lower, it doesn't matter. I'm going out and I plan to win that match.
We all have the skills, the abilities. What separates the tops guys is they believe it. They believe in everything they do. They believe in their training, the way they work, everything they've done, all the sweat and effort they've put forth.
Just the other day in practice, we were doing sprints at the end and we were all dead. Some guys had puppy dog looks on their faces and in their heads they were probably thinking, "This is nuts. Why are they making us do this?" Our coach said, "Have some pride. Man up. Do this. Let's go." You push through it. You fight through it. That's why you're here. You're mentally tough. You're going to let a stupid sprint break you at the end of practice? No way.
It's funny. I did an internship a couple summers ago and one of the principals of the company asked me, "Why do you put so much time into wrestling? You should be working on getting a 4.0 instead of a 3.0. Wrestling should be a little fun thing on the side." I told him, "You don't understand. You just don't get it."
If you put yourself through it for one day and realized how difficult it was, you're not going to put yourself through that to not be the absolute best.
Yeah, it's just a game. But for everything we do and go through for this game, you expect a lot out of it as well. I expect to be a national champion. I want to be the best. I'm not doing this to be second best, to be an All-American. It's not good enough to just be an All-American. Who wants to say, "Yeah, I finished eighth."
Not that that's not great. I've never been an All-American. I've never even been to the NCAA Tournament. But in my mind, I'm shooting for number one.
